Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

Before somebody who knows better steps in and corrects me because this point may have been brought up elsewhere or sometime during the Bush years, consider the possibility that we saw two near duplicates of Engineering (the one without the metallic ladder and 2nd level in season 1) and the one with the metallic ladder and Scotty's perched office.

Also, in The Alternative Factor, we saw yet another variation of Engineering's extension as it applied to the ship, manned by a hot "blue shirt" with great legs. We didn't see the large set with the forced perspective, but it does gives us a notion that "Engineering" isn't limited to one location on the Enterprise.

Submarine crews in today’s navies may remain underwater, isolated from the rest of humanity, for weeks or even months at a time. The interior arrangements of nuclear subs are designed for practicality and maximum use of available space. Curved corridors in a cigar-shaped outer hull would be tremendously wasteful of space.

We're talking about a five year mission, not "months." Anyway, a modern submarine is a straight pipe, divided into decks. It has to follow that form, to travel through water. But a ship in space, not bound to any aero- (or hydro) dynamic? And what wasted space in the 1701? We've already seen curved walls, curved ceilings, curved closets for heaven's sake.

Or are you suggesting that contemporary submarines not be tubes, but long blocks -- something like a massive 2x4, underwater? By your reasoning, that is the most "practical" design.

Submarine crews in today’s navies may remain underwater, isolated from the rest of humanity, for weeks or even months at a time. The interior arrangements of nuclear subs are designed for practicality and maximum use of available space. Curved corridors in a cigar-shaped outer hull would be tremendously wasteful of space.

JAYRATH - That is not MY quote.

The author of that which you have assigned to me from the keyboard of SCOTPEN

Please check the origianl source and make the correction.

TIP: You can always, by-in-large, tell the authenticity of a CAPTAIN TRACY post; as they, on-the-whole, will employ a high degree of accuracy with regard to: content, style, and punctuation - not to mention: wit, wisdom, and general 'snarkiness'.

__________________"Teaching English As A Second Language to the Cohms, it's what I do"

I don't care what Jeffries said in later years, the shipboard conventions depicted in Star Trek were intended to be something the WWII-veteran tv-viewing public could understand and relate to. Space on board ship was at a premium (let alone on s SPACE SHIP). They wouldn't dick around with odd-shaped corridors for the hell of it.

I don't care what Jeffries said in later years, the shipboard conventions depicted in Star Trek were intended to be something the WWII-veteran tv-viewing public could understand and relate to. Space on board ship was at a premium (let alone on s SPACE SHIP). They woulidn't dick around with odd-shaped corridors for the hell of it.

While I agree that the curves corridors were meant to indicate locations in the primary hull, I would hesitate to say the ship was designed to show space was at a premium.

The corridors were pretty wide and tall. Not unlike a hotel or apartment building. No ducking your head or turning sideways to pass.

But we assume no member of the crew was confined to the ship for the entire 5 years.

Or are you suggesting that contemporary submarines not be tubes, but long blocks -- something like a massive 2x4, underwater? By your reasoning, that is the most "practical" design.

Read my post again. Of course a submarine has to have a hydrodynamic shape. The Enterprise’s engineering hull is roughly cylindrical because it looks cool. I was talking about making the most efficient use of available space.

Captain Tracy wrote:

TIP: You can always, by-in-large, tell the authenticity of a CAPTAIN TRACY post; as they, on-the-whole, will employ a high degree of accuracy with regard to: content, style, and punctuation - not to mention: wit, wisdom, and general 'snarkiness'.

The phrase is “by and large.”

Nerys Myk wrote:

While I agree that the curves corridors were meant to indicate locations in the primary hull, I would hesitate to say the ship was designed to show space was at a premium.

The corridors were pretty wide and tall. Not unlike a hotel or apartment building. No ducking your head or turning sideways to pass.

They had to be roomy enough to accomodate a camera dolly, microphone boom, trailing cables and filming crew. No Steadicams in those days.

__________________“All the universe or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

However, the fact remains that the hallways were (and remained throughout later incarnations) 8 feet wide and at least 8 feet high. This is what appeared on our screens for 40 years. Even Franz Joseph (who took many liberties with the layout and design of rooms) kept to these dimensions.

Indeed, it would be quite possible and relatively easy to fit something like six Engineering sets in the secondary hull, e.g. one at each end of a trio of longitudal shafts ("warp cores") that would tie to each other with those prominent angled tubes on the shaft walls. And each location could be symmetrically expanded so that the visible set would only represent the portside or starboard half of the whole. That would cover most of the variation in the (factually single) set seen during the run of the show, while still leaving much of the engineering hull empty.

Clearly, the one interpretation that is not plausible is that Engineering would consist only of that single set. It's said to be a maze where one could hide basically indefinitely, after all.

...And, funnily enough, the TMP set also works best if we ignore the forced perspective for the back wall shaft and interpret it as being just as short as it really was. That way, the unfortunate corridor towards the bow (another poorly working matte) fits inside the secondary hull nicely enough.

It's funny. When I studied admiralty law the professor was this old salt with one arm. He told about how land lubbers would come aboard ship well versed in port vs. starboard, and the captain would just say "turn right!"